Red
by somehowunbroken
Summary: Murphy has always loved the color red. Slight CM, violence, character death.


Author's Note: This one's rather depressing, but I like the way it turned out. Warnings: character death, twincest (although slight) and violence, although if you've been through the movie this won't horrify you. As always, don't like, don't read, and please don't flame. Constructive criticism is more than welcomed.

Disclaimer: I don't own it; you probably don't, either, though, so you can't sue me. Although if you are Troy Duffy... I didn't hurt them; I just played nicely and put them back where I found them when I was done.

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Red has always been Murphy's favorite color. 

When the twins turned five, they had received different presents for the first time in their lives. Murphy got a new soccer ball and a new outfit, while Connor opened a brand new pack of crayons, a coloring book and some blank paper. Each boy was pleased with his gift and glad that he had something distinctive to call his own, but twins share everything from bottles to punches to individual birthday presents, so after playing with Murphy's new soccer ball for a while, the two settled down to color. Connor opened the crayons and closed his eyes as the fresh waxy scent escaped from the box. He sniffed and grinned a five-year-old's toothy grin as he pulled out a random crayon and began to scribble on the page in front of him. Murphy took the discarded box and looked carefully into it, eyes lighting in joy as he pulled the red crayon from the box and joined in the scribbling fun.

Then they're nine, and Ma has saved enough money for the twins to get new clothing for school, two whole new outfits each. Two pairs of slacks, two shirts, two pairs of socks and boxers and a pair of shoes for each. Connor goes wild in the store, trying on practically everything remotely near to his size, but Murphy dawdles through the racks, looking for – _and there it is,_ he thinks as he spies a red shirt. _Perfect._ He gets two.

They are thirteen and in a nod to Connor's fledgling artistic talent, Aunt Maureen gives Connor a thick drawing tablet and a box of good colored pencils. He fools around with the supplies for a long while, doodling and half-drawing but never doing anything _worthwhile_ with the things, or so Murphy thinks until Connor presents him with his first completed drawing – a picture of Murphy, done in shades of red, and it's the most perfect drawing that Murphy has ever seen.

They are seventeen, and Connor and Murphy want so badly to assert their individuality, so they convince Ma to let them paint their room. They'll buy the paint, they assure her, and do it themselves, and _please, Ma,_ and she finally relents. The two boys race to the hardware store to spend their meager savings (and what they've managed to scrape from the inside of the sofa) on some _color_ for their dismally white room. Connor finally settles on a nice sky blue for his side of the room, and Murphy lets Connor talk him out of painting his own side fire engine red. _How about beige,_ Connor suggested, _and red on the trim on the window and about the door? And a running stripe around the wall,_ he adds, just to win Murphy over. Murphy agrees, just because he knows that an all-red room would drive Connor crazy, but he still secretly wants to paint both sides of the room the color of Christmas.

They are twenty and Murphy notices the red of Connor's lips, his cheeks, his face when he's flushed as Murphy shoves him against the wall and kisses him _hard_ so he'll remember it in the morning. Murphy sees the red in the nips and tugs he gives to Connor's skin and in the fireworks he sees in his eyes as the two move together in an unsynchronized rhythm.

Suddenly they are twenty-three and living in South Boston and in a bar; more specifically, in a bar fight. It's the locals against three large Italian hotshots, probably mob peons, who stumbled half-plastered into McGinty's and insulted Doc while demanding drinks from him. The locals had, naturally, torn into the three, and as Murphy surveys the unconscious heap of bloody criminals, he thinks, _beautiful._

They are twenty-seven and God has given them a mission, a calling, a duty to change the world one evil man and one bullet at a time. Murphy revels in each shot for the Lord, each murderer or rapist or child molester taken off the streets for good. He revels in the blood he sheds for the Lord while he sees the beauty in the patterns left spattering the floor, walls, furniture, anything and everything that happened to be in the way at the time. Connor thinks he's crazy when Murphy asks him if he thinks it's beautiful, so Murphy keeps his thoughts to himself.

Red has always been Murphy's favorite color, but now he hates it hates it _hates it_ because it's spilling from Connor's lips and from Connor's side and no matter what Murphy does the red keeps on coming. Murphy is cradling his brother to him, one hand holding Connor's side where the bullet went in and the other fishing desperately in his pocket for his cell phone, a cheap pay-as-you-go that was best for their job since it could be thrown out a car window without consternation. His hand slips and paints his phone in that awful color as he dials Smecker's phone number, feels his brother begin to convulse beneath him, curses and blasphemes and yells into the phone _where are you, motherfucker, pick up your goddamn phone_ and then Smecker is somehow there and trying to pull him from Connor. He swings blindly and misses Smecker but connects with the brick wall behind him, and he sees red _God it's everywhere_ as the pain explodes in his hand. He's got the pain under control, but the red is still everywhere, and Smecker is saying terrible things like _lost a lot of blood_ and _hospital_ and _don't know if he's going to make it_ and _come on, Murphy, come with me_ but Smecker's not going where Connor's going, and Murphy needs to stay with Connor. Smecker insists that he's going with Connor, that they're going to the hospital, that he can go with Smecker, and Murphy's suddenly crashing and he agrees and slumps down in Smecker's car and refuses to cry.

The red line of Connor's heart monitor is a fascinating thing, or so it would seem to anyone looking in the room. Murphy clutched one of his brother's hands in his own, his other hand tangled in his rosary, lips moving and eyes never breaking their gaze at the screen in front of him. Connor hasn't woken, hasn't come back yet and no matter what they say Murphy knows that his brother is in there _just give him a little more time, more time please_ so he sits by Connor's side, day in day out, waiting, watching that little red line.

Murphy hates red and all things attached to it, but he figures that he has to buy a red rose for Connor's grave. Red took his life, so Murphy wants to give Connor some red to take with him. There aren't many people in the church, but he looks around and sees more than he thought would show, and is pleased that so many remembered his beautiful most beloved brother. Smecker, of course, and the Three Stooges from the police department plus a few more; Doc, of course, and his hired help and the rest of the locals from the bar; a few people they had known from church. They haven't been in this neighborhood since Rocco died, but they'd been near enough when Connor died that Murphy could bring him here to be laid to rest. Now he sat, alone by choice, in the front row nearest his brother's body, letting the words spoken from the pulpit wash around him. He toys with the rose in his hands, noting but not caring as he pricks his finger and bleeds on the carpet of the church.

Murphy stands at the end of the service and follows the pallbearers to the grave, watches as they put his beloved brother in the frozen ground. He walks to the edge of the hole _six feet isn't that much_ and drops his hand, still clutching the rose, to his side. In one single fluid movement showing a natural grace that hadn't been seen in weeks, Murphy spun and grabbed a gun from beneath his coat. He pointed it at his own head, knowing exactly where to aim the barrel for the quickest effect. He smiled at the crowd, who were all looking at him in shock, then simply pulled the trigger, sending a flood of red onto the box as he tumbled into the hole.

Silence stunned the crowd for a moment before all hell broke loose.

The red rose drifted, unnoticed, to the ground.


End file.
